Flamingos, Fascism and a Few Ugly Signs: Albania's Protests Take a Darker Turn

The prime minister's Socialist Party won the last parliamentary elections, held in May 2025, taking 52% of the vote on a turnout of just over 40%. Yet the government is not alone in backing the construction project: the opposition Democratic Party, led by Sali Berisha, supports it too.

The protests are therefore aimed at both parties, and are marked by slogans such as "Rama to prison, Berisha to prison" and "Resignation, not dialogue". The movement has no central leadership and comprises several groups, yet their demands are broadly unified.

Demonstrators are calling for an immediate halt to construction to avert environmental disaster, along with an investigation into the legality of the government's permitting process. The government, led by Rama, denies any wrongdoing.

Nature Doesn't Get a Say

Linked to this construction work is a costly project backed by US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, who was granted preliminary approval from the local government. The luxury resort scheme spans the uninhabited island of Sazan and a stretch of protected coastline near the village of Zvernec.

Jared Kushner paid $1.4bn for the island, which his wife, Ivanka, has designated private property. The couple's wider deal also includes a $4.7bn agreement covering part of the protected coastal landscape near Zvernec.

Since late May, according to reporting by Maira Butt for The Independent, excavators and other heavy machinery have moved into the area to open access roads, dig into the sand, clear land among the pine trees and install fencing. Construction progressed further over the summer.

On the evening of 8 June, Prime Minister Edi Rama told Reuters that construction would not be halted despite the ongoing protests, and that the resort's first guests could arrive before the end of the decade. He confirmed he had met personally with the future investors as early as 2021, and in August he reiterated his determination to press ahead with construction.

According to Rama, the environmental impact assessment has yet to be carried out and will be completed alongside construction rather than before it, meaning any deficiencies or violations uncovered later would come too late to prevent damage.

The project promises to bring up to €1.4bn ($1.6bn) to the Albanian economy and create some 1,000 jobs during construction and subsequent operation. According to the investors, the resort is intended to establish Albania as a sought-after Mediterranean destination.

When Protection Becomes a Loophole

The protests draw on two animal symbols: Skanderbeg's black eagle, and the flamingo, one of the species whose habitat is threatened by the construction. The movement has, in turn, become known as the Flamingo Revolution.

Flamingos are far from the only species at risk. Seals, Dalmatian pelicans, sea turtles and roughly 70 other animal species in the surrounding wetlands and lagoons are also threatened, as are the habitats and flora that sustain them.

The affected area, Pishe Poro-Narta, whose name translates roughly as "the Poro-Narta pine forest", held nature reserve status until October 2022, when the government in Tirana downgraded its protection and shrank it from 21,000 to 16,000 hectares.

The following year, on 22 February 2024, the Albanian Parliament amended the law on protected areas to permit hotel construction, provided the developments are deemed "exceptional" and rated five stars or above.

On 7 June, the European Commission warned that Albania, by breaching the EU's "Birds and Habitats Directives", was moving further away from EU membership rather than closer to it. Greece, too, has voiced concern, given the significant ethnic Greek minority in the region.

The Ugly Edge of a Popular Revolt

The fact that the investor is one of the most well-known Jewish businesspeople of modern times has caused the protests to veer into anti-Semitic rhetoric. Jared Kushner, whom the Jerusalem Post named, jointly with Ivanka Trump, the most influential Jew on the planet on 10 September, has said the resort plan was conceived in 2021 aboard Nathaniel Rothschild's yacht, during a cruise along the Adriatic coast where he discussed the project with the Albanian prime minister in person.

Construction is being carried out under the banner of Atlantic Incubation Partners, a company linked to Kushner's private investment firm, Affinity Partners. According to findings by The New York Times, Affinity has invested more than 75% of its roughly $5bn in assets in just two ventures: Phoenix Financial, an Israeli insurance company, and Revolut, the financial technology start-up.

Kushner also has business ties to George Soros, Africa Israel Investments and Israel itself, and critics argue that Tirana is acting in Israel's interests, both in this specific project and over the longer term. Partly for this reason, the demonstrations have also taken on an anti-Semitic undertone.

One banner parodies a nationalist slogan, reading: "Greater Albania was promised to us three thousand years ago", positioned beside a poster bearing the face of Adolf Hitler. Another depicts a painting of Sazan island, with Hitler looking down from the clouds and declaring: "I warned you all".

Among photographs of the demonstrators, the Albanian news site Atlantiku captured a poster reading "Albania for the Albanians, death to traitors", accompanied by four maps of Albania, each showing an increasingly larger share of the country under Israeli occupation, an evident allusion to the Palestinian territorial narrative. Israel's ambassador to Albania said the banners reminded her of 1930s Germany.

The protesters, moreover, have long since broadened their demands beyond simply halting construction in the protected area. The movement could yet evolve into a political force, though Rama continues to hold a strong parliamentary majority, and the opposition Democratic Party has itself declined to oppose the underlying project.